Hit & Run (R)

Hit & Run, a new action comedy engineered by faintly Muppety co-director/writer/star Dax Shepard, is as much about running mouths as running motors, and injects estrogen into the few remaining enclaves of American testosterone, muscle cars, and FM cock rock. A lead named "Charles Bronson" and the '67 Lincoln Continental that he takes out of mothballs should establish Hit & Run's cinematic pedigree, but this chase film—shot fast and cheap, using cars from gearhead Shepard's own garage—arranges a head-on collision between 1970s' individualism and 2012 p.c. While on the run from police, Charlie takes a dressing down from his girlfriend (Kristen Bell) for using the word "fag" as a synonym for "lame"; later, when he pulls up in a buggy, he's heckled from offscreen for not "going green," to which he responds, "It's biodiesel, friend." That even the criminal class have gone sensitive and finicky eco-conscious has some potential for comedy, but there's no single detail that might convince a viewer that the characters played by Dax Shepard and Bradley Cooper might ever have been compelled to steal for a living, and this alienates the crime picture from any social context or sense of actual danger, making it essentially a celebrity goof-off. The stunt driving warrants only passing mention, for it's never more than serviceable-- one wishes that Shepard and co-director David Palmer had spent a little more time studying Walter Hill and a little less on Hal Needham.